The roof is on fire

So, Development was (for the most part) working away nicely on a Friday afternoon, when we noticed a plume of smoke outside the window. Of course, the thought of a field trip was irresistible, so we all climbed the fire escape to the building roof, and noticed this:

Yes, that’s a veld fire in the District Six area. Obviously, we don’t know what caused it, but as everything in Cape Town is extremely dry after some pretty intense heat that we’ve been having lately, it probably wouldn’t take much for a cigarette end carelessly flicked out of some motorist’s window to set that off.

Of course, this being Cape Town, the wind blew the fire across the road:

Now, for those unfamiliar with the area, just behind that other building in the office park lies the N2 freeway. Hate to think what visibility is like for those motorists right now.

And then of course, the smoke plume gets blown over towards the CBD:

Two things to consider: the aforementioned visibility problem on the N2 (which you can’t even see in the above shot!), and the fact that it’s now 15:30 and people are starting to bugger off from work.